E: Drive not reading my burned CD-R. What's up?

Same drive I burned it with. It asks me to insert disc when there is one in there! I put in a regular,store-bought, pre-recorded CD in, and it worked fine.

Do I need to adjust something?

 

When is the last time you cleaned the laser? Or perhaps it's a brand of blank cd that the drive doesn't like?

 

Was the disc finalized after you burned it?

You should be burning your CDs with the Disc-at-once method anyway.

 

It could probably use a cleaning. The CDs that were being rejected were both Maxell Pro Data discs. I tried another Japanese Fuji CD (also burned on my computer) and nothing.

Then I tried a Memorex made in Taiwan and a colored Maxell made in Japan, both burned on other players. They worked.

Yes.

I didn't know that made a difference. How's that work?

 

Okay, I just recorded a disc usint Disc-At-Once. How is that different from track-at-once?

 

Track-at-once inserts a 2 second gap between tracks because the laser turns off and then turns back on. Disk-at-once keeps the laser on for the whole burn and doesn't insert gaps.

I think that this is irrelevant to the conversation, except that disk-at-once also automatically closes that disk at the end of the burn, but if you did that any way, then it doesn't matter which method you used.

Have you tried the disk in another drive?

This might sound stupid, but are you sure you actually burned a disk? Can you see the dye transition on the back of the disk? I consider myself fairly adept at burning disks, and a few weeks ago I got my external burner all set up and clicked "burn." The computer chugged away and showed a status bar fro 15 minutes and then said that it was done. But there was nothing on the disk. I tried it again before I realized that it was "burning" an image to my hard drive and not to the CD. I don't know if this is the same with you, but it's something to check...

 

Thanks for the info. I have checked the disks in question on another computer and played them in the car.

I did give the laser lens a little clean,as prix suggested, before I did the disc-at-once. Maybe that made a difference?

 

How old is the burner? It could be a sign of death. The TOC may be written incorrectly, which would still be the fault of the burner.

 

Please don't tell me that. It's a hand-me-down.

 

If it's burning OK in DAO, then that's a good sign.

I've never seen a CDRW drive fail when it's written something and there's nothing "there". That's usually because the software might be set for "Test Burn" or "Test record only". Everything will go fine, but nothing will be written.

When a drive fails, you usually get a laser calibration error each time you record. When that happens, it's most likely the drive is bad.

 

Could be, I have one that is acting up too. Works one day and not the next.

 

So if I just keep it in "record only", I should be fine.

Thanks!

 

Yep. The only reason you would open Nero (for instance) and take the checkmark out of "write" in the record dialog is to run a test. The test would run the recording process without the laser "ON". It can help in distinguishing problem areas like poor transfer rates or even poor laser calibration.

Some CD writing software is set to "Test, Not Burn" by default. Why, I donno.

 

Wow. Am I just hearing things?

I just made a CD using the DAO instead of TAO from MP3 files and it sounds better!

Is it just psychological, since I am more relieved that I found the problem? Hm....

 

It's in your head.

 

Secles, you mean you've been "virtual" burning in test mode all this time?

 

I've been virtually doing something.

No, this 2 second gap, laser off/on thing that MITBeta mentioned, does that effect the quality?

 

Burning a CD with TAO will not affect the sound of the music, but will affect the quality of the CD you burn. It will make it LESS compatible with other players/burners, and may actually develop errors as a result. It is not a red-book standard CD-R. Only burning with DAO will yeild a red-book CD that stands a better chance of being read by everything. You should only do important burns with DAO.

BTW, I never bother with any test burns unless I suspect a problem somewhere.

 

Thanks a lot! This really makes a lot of problems I've been experiencing with my burned cds make sense!

For example, when one song leads into another I got the silent gap where it shouldn't have been there. Very annoying. Also, CDs burned for friends that told me they couldn't play them on their CD players.

 

Well, your problemm could still be your burner...

Most CD burning software defaults with either TAO or DAO with the two-second gap already. Some programs that default with TAO and the 2- second gap have to be user adjusted for the CD.

TAO only exists in order to make burning CD-Rs easier for the novice. Some programs, like Audition 1.5 and CD Architect will not even burn with TAO. On the other hand, some programs commonly used by novices, don't burn with DAO.